


The Artwork of Patch Houston

by ChillyJackal



Series: Zootopia Oddities AU [1]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Anthro, Gen, Horror, Silver Fox, lovecraft, paintings, skunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8590684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChillyJackal/pseuds/ChillyJackal
Summary: A skunk working for the Zootopian Times follows a lead from his co-worker about an artist who's paintings leave a strange effect on the viewer.





	

I'm not sure why I'm writing this down. The events I'm going to describe sound so out of touch with our reality that I know any mammal reading this will think I've lost my right mind. 

My name is Gregory Stripe, and I'm a journalist for the Zootopian Times, which you may have seen in your local grocery store sitting in a prestigious position between the travel brochures and fashion magazines. Our articles deal with different aspects and parts of Zootopian culture ranging from "The Daily Life Of A Naturalist" to "Mayoral Scandals and How They Affect You". 

To be quite fair, our own paper fits right in with the rest of the trivial and pointless literature you may be thumbing through while waiting in line at the store, but this isn't important to my story, it's just a quick explanation of the sort of articles you'd normally expect from myself and my workplace.

This changed the other day when one of my colleagues approached me with an interesting idea for a new article, something to spice up the usual chatter and mundane everyday gossip, something strange. He told me about an artist working in the Rainforest District with a collection of work that could be considered "unusual". At first I wasn't too convinced, after all most artists are eccentric and strange in some way, and anyone can make something "unusual" in terms of artwork.

My friend assured me that not only was the work in question different from anything I'd ever seen, but it had a strange effect on anyone who viewed it. I tried to ask him what he meant but he refused to clarify, telling me I had to see the work for myself. 

With no other leads to go on that day, I decided to take the trip to the Rainforest District and pay a visit to "Foxy Photos and Paints", a relatively small and average looking store from the outside. The store itself was built into a large sweeping tree, with a slightly worn sign bearing the store's name and logo, a small fox holding a paint can and brush. 

Upon entering the establishment I was immediately overtaken by just how small it really was on the inside. Despite my short stature as a skunk the place seemed a bit cramped even for me, made worse by the collections of paintings and colour swatches taking up most of the space. On the far, if you could call it far, end of the store was the front desk, and tucked away to the right of the store a very small area simply labeled "Photography". It was obvious that the "Photos" in Foxy Photos took a back seat to the "Paints". 

I approached the front desk and rang the small bell, taken by surprise when the chair behind the desk spun around to reveal a very bored looking silver fox. I greeted her and was given a very scripted speal welcoming me to her business and giving me her name, Patch Houston. Ms.Houston came off right away as someone who either didn't care for her work, or was constantly tired and struggling to keep awake. Between stretches and yawns she asked me why I had come, if I needed a fence painted or perhaps some photos taken for a passport. 

I told Ms.Houston that I worked for the Zootopian Times and that I was interested in investigating her work for an article. At first she seemed puzzled, asking me why I would waste my time writing about regular photos or paintings, like the vast amount displayed in the shop. I corrected her, explaining that I had been told she made artwork of a different variety.

A grin spread across her face and for the first time since I entered the building she had a hint of interest in the conversation. 

"Oh. You must be Stanley's buddy. He told me he was gonna send someone in to look at the good stuff."

I raised an eyebrow at this and asked her what she meant by "The Good Stuff".

Her grin widened and she stood up, walking over to another area hidden behind the paintings and swatches, opening the curtain and signalling for me to follow her in.

Curious, I obliged.

The room behind the paintings was much different than the front of the store, there were pieces of printing equipment and chemicals for photography work littered about and it looked as if the room was rarely used.

"I keep the good ones back here, no point putting them with the other stuff, don't want to look like a sellout."

She ushered me over to a small collection of paintings, each one covered in a sheet. 

"You better get a notepad out buddy, you'll wanna take lots of notes on these babies."

I obliged again, taking out my pen and the small notepad I admit had been used more for doodling and grocery lists than actual note taking. She pulled the sheets off the paintings and for a solid minute I stared blankly at the canvases, unsure exactly how to feel or react.

The actual content of the first few paintings is hard to describe, it was as if someone tried to paint other mammals or creatures, tried to make portraits, but then started warping and distorting the features haphazardly as if attempting to add some kind of "style" to them but just ending up with an unsettling mess. 

The content of the last two paintings I'm not sure I can really describe, but I'll make an attempt. I could make out shapes amongst the mess of colours and lines, the jagged lines and warping twisting colours, meshing together in a disgusting way that actually managed to turn my stomach and make my heart race. I looked down at my notepad and realized I had only managed to make distracted scribbles rather than notes. 

Ms.Houston took notice of my reaction and covered the paintings back up, a look of satisfaction on her face as she gave me a hearty pat on the shoulder.

"Heh, pretty cool right? I can paint landscapes and stuff sure, but this is what I really want to do with my art."

I could only nod and take a breath of relief when the paintings were covered back up. How a mammal could even imagine these things, let alone put them to canvas without feeling ill confused and shook me quite a bit.

"Y'know, I have even better ones at my place."

I shook myself of my stupor and turned to face the silver fox, who had taken to leaning on a broken printer. 

"You wanna check 'em out? If you want something really amazing for your article, you gotta see my best work."

I'm not sure what possessed me to do it, but I agreed to go to her home to see her "Best Work". Despite my reaction to her paintings in the back of the shop, I felt that if there was something that could invoke emotions greater than her pieces there, I needed to see them, I needed to write about them and reveal this to the public in some way. 

Patch Houston's home was a small one story house in a fairly populated area of the Nocturnal District. The thunder of clouds overhead and the first drops of rain on the concrete outside made it seem as if the rain from the forest had followed us here, a reminder that the unsettling things in that store were still with me, and something else awaited me inside.

Patch lead me into the doorway of her home, shutting it behind us and warning me to wipe my paws on the carpet before walking on her recently cleaned floor. I continued to follow her as she lead me past a modest living room, a small kitchen and a bedroom with walls covered in photos and sketches. The entire home was more like an apartment than anything else, with small rooms separated by a hall cutting down the center of the home. 

At the very end of the hall was a small worn out looking door, with multiple locks and deadbolts. She told me this was the door to the basement, and that after a robbery attempt via the basement window she added locks to the door and kept it shut tight almost every day. She undid the locks and the door slowly creaked open, a wooden staircase descended into the darkness, and Ms.Houston wasted no time trotting down the stairs and hitting a light switch at the bottom, illuminating the creaky steps for me. 

"C'mon down buddy, I won't bite ya."

I smiled nervously at her attempt at humor and followed down the old steps. Unlike the rest of the house, the steps and the basement itself seemed as if they belonged in a different house entirely. Unlike the more modern apartment styled home the basement was old and worn all around. Closer examination of the basement itself revealed that Ms.Houston had set it up very similarly to how she had set up the Foxy Photos front room, with what I could only assume were paintings on either side of the room and a back room closed off with a curtain. 

"You ready for this? These are some of my best works."

I took a long deep breath of the musty basement air and nodded, ready for the worst. She paced up and down the empty space in the room, peeking under sheets and humming out loud as if trying to decide what piece to show me first, before she could however a ringing noise could be heard upstairs.

"Oh, oh geeze, I'm really sorry, that must be a customer, I should've turned that stupid phone off."

She walked past me, assuring me that she'd return very shortly before running up the stairs to catch her late caller. Left alone in the basement with her art, I let out a sigh of relief. Part of me didn't want to see how much worse the art here was compared to the art in her store, I wanted to at least get some sleep tonight. I couldn't help however, but to feel curious.

I deeply regret giving in to my curiosity.

One by one, I looked under the different sheets and took in each canvas beneath, each one very much identical in terms of content when compared to the ones in the back room of Foxy Photos, and each one leaving me feeling cold and perturbed even after covering them back up with the sheets like a protective blanket. 

Warped mammals, strange colours, twisting lines and scaled things, things that I can barely comprehend let alone write down or describe in any sort of actual detail. All these things were just barely hidden beneath thin sheets, like thin skins of protection against the things they portrayed. I was vaguely surprised when I found one that simply had the Foxy Photos logo on it in the corner amongst the rest of the unsettling gallery. 

After looking at them all I listened to the floor above to see if Ms.Houston was finished, but I could still hear her bored voice talking to someone on the phone.

My eyes wandered to the room separated with the curtain and a thought crossed my mind. If these were the artworks suited to the front of her gallery, what was she hiding back here?

In a moment of weakness and stupidity, I approached the curtain, a wave of anxiety and fear gripping me, as if whatever was behind this final protective blanket was so powerful it was leaking through the thin layer of safety it provided me with. I pulled open the curtain and looked inside.

What I saw behind that curtain makes me question everything I've ever thought, not just about our world, our society, but reality in general. The things on those canvases were not right. They were not right at all. I refuse to describe those impossible things on this page, but that wasn't the worst of it. In a final, stupid second I reached out, I have no idea why the hell I did it, and touched the canvas of one of those horrible paintings.

Ms.Houston nearly fell over when I shoved past her, screaming and fleeing from her home and leaping into my car to get away, I could just barely see her peeking out the window in confusion as I hit the gas and sped off towards my home. I worry I may have sprayed in her basement from the fear, but part of me doesn't even care. 

As I sat in my driveway staring at the wheel, unable to speak I had a chilling realization, the reason I fled the house in terror and refuse to go near it or the Photo and Paints store.

The things behind the curtains weren't paintings.

They were photographs.


End file.
